The Tragic Song of the Fifth Beatle

The pictures of a young, androgynous and moody looking couple, dressed in black, both with a similar brushed forward hairstyle, and a striking self-portrait of a young blonde in front of a mirror were the source of inspiration that eventually led to a book.

After I had stumbled upon Astrid Kirchherr’s pictures on the Internet while I was looking for pictures of Hamburg from the early sixties, I discarded all previous ideas I had about The Beatles and read everything I could find about her and Stuart Sutcliffe – and their apparently irrevocable role within The Beatles’ history and pop mythology. Their story sounded to me like a tragic love song from the very same era in which the story is set: the years between the slow fading of the first rock’n'roll stars and the British Invasion, when a new genre introduced songs with downright dramatic dimensions to popular music, the melodrama. (I’m a huge fan of early R’n'B, girl groups, Roy Orbison, etc.)

When I met Astrid for the first time in 2007, I realized that we shared a lot and that she would agree to my idea of telling her story primarily in pictures – and that she was not a melodramatic person at all.

Astrid’s story, her passion for black and white photography, her undying admiration for Jean Cocteau and finally, the romance between her and Stuart Sutcliffe, is a story that simply has to be told in images. Astrid herself had always been interested in communicating visually, not only as a photographer, but through her own appearance, distinctive look and clear aesthetic vision. Explaining her fascination with the young Teddy Boys from Liverpool she met in Hamburg in 1960, she said that she was “amazed at how beautiful these boys looked. It was a photographer’s dream.”

First and foremost, she fell in love with a picture, a look, a certain attitude – the image of Rock’n'Roll. She barely spoke English at that time, and when she eventually met the boys outside the dark Kaiserkeller to take photographs of the then-unknown group, she was attracted by the most silent one, the cool bassist – and as it turned out, an artist as well. Astrid, highly romantic in every sense of the word, fell in love at first sight, convinced that she had found a soul mate.

Just one month later, she and Stuart got engaged, and in 1961, Stuart left the group, enrolled at the Hamburg State school of Art and finally fused with Astrid’s so-called “Exi(stentialist)” scene. He had his hair cut in the style of his new German art school friends, he started wearing Astrid’s clothes, tight trousers, long black sweaters and scarves. At this point, Existentialism had already become a fashion rather than a philosophy, but it was still the preserve of a small group of culture leaders.

Only two years later, when the Beatles adopted the“pilzkopf“ haircut as well, they dressed in black turtlenecks and were photographed in Astrid’s favorite Chiaroscuro lighting by Robert Freeman for their second album. This style would become part of the distinctive Beatles’ image and, eventually, pop culture.

Stuart did not live to see the Beatles become a mass phenomenon. He died at the age of 21 of a brain hemorrhage, on the way to a hospital in Hamburg, in Astrid arms. It still sounds like a tragic love song to me.